[Vietnamization: Military] Vietnam And Cambodia Military Ties Mature

[backgroud . related]

Vietnamization: Military

How Vietnam "foil plots" (democratic elections) to keep its CPP puppet in power in its destruction of Cambodia

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Defense Minister Tea Banh and Maj. Gen. Van inspect troops. KT/Ven Rathavong

The two military men look at a display on military ties. KT/Ven Rathavong

Vietnam’s Major General Le Hien Van and Defense Minister Tea Banh at yesterday’s gathering of senior military officials. KT/Ven Rathavong

Vietnam And Cambodia Military Ties Mature

Khmer Times | 30 November 2016

Since 1980, Cambodia has sent nearly 17,000 military officials for training in Vietnam [this not including the POLICE officers and other security personnel who continue to be trained in Vietnam in the unknown (tens of?) thousands], which has inspired Defense Minister Tea Banh to pose the idea of an alumni gathering for all military officials who have received overseas training.
 

General Meas Sam Ol, director of the Defense Ministry’s personnel department, said yesterday during a gathering of military officials who have trained in Vietnam that 4,895 military officials received long-, medium- or short-term training in Vietnam from 1980 until 1989.
 

He added that from 2002 until the present, 12,068 military officials have received training, with 10,230 already graduated and 1,038 still studying.
 

Gen. Sam Ol said the officials studied all skills related to military procedure.
 

Major General Le Hien Van, deputy director of the Vietnam People’s Army’s general department of politics, said at the alumni gathering: “Until present, more than 15,000 Cambodian military officials have studied at institutes of the Vietnam People’s Army.
 

“This figure is very significant and reflects close cooperation and efficiency between both countries’ armies for building and training human resources and enhancing army development,” he said, adding that more than 1,000 Cambodian military officials are now studying long term in Vietnam.
 

He added that they could use their knowledge to develop Cambodia upon their return.
 

In front of 1,200 officials who trained in Vietnam, Gen. Banh said: “We will provide an opportunity for all trainees [military officials] who have studied in other countries. If you all want to hold an alumni gathering, we will do it.”
 

He added that officials have been sent to study in Russia, Australia, the US, China and other countries. He said he would support a gathering of students who have trained overseas.
 

In June, Vietnam’s National Defense Minister Ngo Xuan Lich paid a visit to Cambodia and pledged to expand military cooperation, continue providing training to army officials and build human resources in the military sector.

[Vietnamization: Military] Banh warns of ‘hurricane’ of change

Defence Minister Tea Banh speaks at the National Defence University last week in Phnom Penh. Photo supplied

Banh warns of ‘hurricane’ of change

Phnom Penh Post | 7 February 2017

Cambodia's military should be ready to stop the “hurricane” of change as it gathers strength with the approaching election, Defence Minister Tea Banh warned last week.

The leader of Cambodia’s ostensibly neutral armed forces made the comments at the Ministry of Defence to more than 800 newly minted soldiers, accepted into the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces after completing their training last year.

He also passed out some 150 cases of free beer, 200 kilograms of beef and reading materials, intended to help soldiers “wake up”, remember the “value of peace” and avoid “getting lost”.

Though political diatribes by top brass in the Kingdom’s military are far from rare, the minister’s speech on Thursday appeared to go a step further, suggesting possible intervention by the military after making thinly veiled references to the threat posed by the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party.

Accusing the unnamed enemy of “tricks”, “insults” and not giving due credit for the country’s development, Banh warned of the “dangers” of unsatisfied soldiers turning to the opposition.

“We consider it a hurricane that blows towards each of us, making [us] think that it is the right thing and about whether there should be change or not,” he said.

“We need to study this . . . It does not mean that I take this opportunity to politicise, but the thing is, if we don’t speak, it becomes impossible, because politics always comes to haunt us and make trouble for us."

Addressing these problems “will a big aim for our Royal Cambodian Armed Forces . . . We consider [our] forces are the forces that can stop or prevent it from implementing its desires easily,” he added, in an apparent veiled reference to the opposition.

[Related / Background]

Vietnamization: Military 

Vietnam, Cambodia "defence cooperation in order to...foil plots to weaken their relations"

How Vietnam "foil plots" (democratic elections) to keep its CPP puppet in power in its destruction of Cambodia

[Vietnamization: Military, Elections, Tbaung Khmum] Military Police put on alert

Military police stand in formation to listen to speeches from their leaders in Phnom Penh on Wednesday. On Monday, Deputy Commander Vong Pisen told forces to be on high alert. Cam Post

Military Police put on alert

Phnom Penh Post | 8 September 2017

The National Military Police have been put on alert and are ready to intervene to defend the legal government and prevent any attempts at a “colour revolution” in the country – or such was the message coming from the force’s Deputy Commander Vong Pisen a day after the surprise arrest of opposition leader Kem Sokha on Sunday. 

The Cambodia National Rescue Party president was arrested around midnight on Sunday, and has since been charged with “treason” and placed in pre-trial detention in a Tbong Khmum province prison, for saying in a 2013 video that he had received assistance from the United States to plan his political career. 

The next day, Pisen ordered personnel in Phnom Penh and the provinces to be on alert and await any order from higher ups to deploy their “forces”, “trucks and armoured vehicles” for a crackdown. 

“All Military Police units must respect and adhere firmly to the government’s orders, the Ministry of Defence, Royal Cambodian Armed Forces and National Military Police Commander to protect the legal government and be determined to prevent the colour revolution from happening in Cambodia,” he said in Phnom Penh. 

Colour revolution has become a buzzword among government and military officials, and refers to the largely peaceful citizen movements that have toppled regimes in the former Soviet Bloc and Middle East. In recent days, the term has picked up greater currency, with conspiracy theories about a US-backed colour revolution swirling on government-aligned media ahead of Sokha’s arrest.

Pisen asked his officials to control the information flow about Sokha’s arrest by offering “education” to lower officers and staffers about US involvement in the Lon Nol-led coup in 1970, and to help them identify the “tricks of the enemy” attempting a colour revolution. 

The diktat also follows a stream of violent rhetoric employed prior to and following the commune elections in June. Before the poll, Defence Minister Tea Banh vowed to “smash the teeth” of protesters who disputed the election results, and Prime Minister Hun Sen told his opponents to “prepare their coffins” because he was ready to kill hundreds to maintain stability. 

[Vietnamization] Military Looks to Project Softer Image With January 7 Games

Military Looks to Project Softer Image With January 7 Games

The Cambodia Daily | 10 January 2017

More than 600 civilians and soldiers competed in annual military games on Phnom Penh’s Koh Pich island on Sunday, hoisting heavy tires, racing with weighted backpacks and marching in formation in an event intended to warm public attitudes toward the armed forces.

“The event today is to promote civil-military awareness and friendship in order for the public to understand what the role of the military is,” said Hun Manet, the oldest son of Prime Minister Hun Sen and a senior figure in the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces.

Hun Manet, center, laughs along with fellow army officers during military games on Phnom Penh’s Koh Pich island on Sunday. (Khem Sovannara)

Speaking to reporters after an hour of grinning and flashing thumbs-up in selfies with eager fans after the games, Lieutenant General Manet echoed remarks his father had made the previous day during a ceremony marking the fall of the Khmer Rouge 38 years ago.

“The peace, security and stability we feel today is a result of the armed forces,” he said. “If you go one day without the presence of traffic police at the corner, gendarmerie, you will feel unsafe.”

Though the war games are an annual occurrence marking January 7, the day Pol Pot was toppled by Vietnamese forces, Sunday’s event was the largest ever, said presiding officials. It was also the first time that civilian teams were allowed to participate in the games, and the first time the games were not held at a military academy outside the city.

[Vietnamization: military] Training photos raising eyebrows

[Background / related]

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Two members of Cambodia’s military police brandish assault rifles during a training session in Phnom Penh on Sunday. GRK

Training photos raising eyebrows

Phnom Penh Post | 

Military police armed with AK-47s, batons and shields and backed by a fire engine with a water cannon come across a ragtag group of civilians huddled together and holding up banners. They point the rifles, fire the water cannon, and disperse the minor threat with almost no effort. 

The scene could be taken for an amalgam of the suppression of different protests following the disputed July 2013 national election, which began with the use of water cannons and ended with military police shooting dead five garment workers and injuring some 40 more.

But it is not. The tale, told in 12 photographs uploaded to the national military police Facebook page on Sunday afternoon, instead shows 518 trainee military police practising how to deal with unruly protests they might confront in the future.

Military police spokesman Eng Hy said yesterday that Sao Sokha – the force’s commander and a close ally of Prime Minister Hun Sen – had ordered the training in order to teach the military police how to deal with groups that threaten public order.

“General Sao Sokha considers the training and the education of the force to be a priority, and therefore our forces are always getting training and learning daily,” Hy said. “Sometimes, the provinces send their forces to the national level to learn and to get training to better protect security and public order and to reduce the risk for our authorities and for the suspects.”

[Vietnamization: Military] ‘Colour’ coups on group’s agenda

CNRP president Sam Rainsy acknowledges the crowd in 2013 during the opposition’s occupation of Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park in the wake of disputed national elections.Pha Lina

‘Colour’ coups on group’s agenda

Phnom Penh Post | 7 February 2017

A cross-ministry task force, convened to deal specifically with protests, has added stopping “colour revolutions” and “anarchy” to its mandate, according to recently obtained documents.

According to the 2016-2019 action plan for the Committee to Solve Strikes and Demonstrations of All Targets, the body’s scope has been broadened to include the reference to the largely peaceful people-based movements, which have toppled regimes in the former Soviet bloc.

The group must now “stop and prevent inciters” who “cheat people to join their illegal anarchic action, commit violence, destroy private property and states in order to create a colour revolution to destroy peace, stability and topple the legitimate government”, the document reads.

The directive also tasks the National Police, National Military Police and Royal Cambodian Armed Forces’ high command to develop plans in line with the threat. The committee is tasked with checking and ensuring the implementation of these plans and reporting to the premier, it states.

Reached yesterday, Defence Ministry spokesman Chhum Socheat said the new emphasis on preventing “colour revolution” was justified.

“When a problem occurs, we need to maintain security and we cannot allow a small group to damage the peace,” he said, adding the government did not want a repeat of the January 2014 protests that followed the disputed 2013 election.

Those ended in violence when government forces fired automatic weapons into a crowd of rioters on the capital’s Veng Sreng Boulevard, killing five.

 

[Related / Background]

 

Vietnamization: Military 

Vietnam, Cambodia "defence cooperation in order to...foil plots to weaken their relations"

How Vietnam "foil plots" (democratic elections) to keep its CPP puppet in power in its destruction of Cambodia

[Vietnamization: military, China responds] Drills Highlight Deepest Chinese Military Ties in Decades

Drills Highlight Deepest Chinese Military Ties in Decades

 The Cambodia Daily | 17 December 2016

A nine-day joint Chinese-Cambodian military exercise involving 1,000 soldiers kicked off on Thursday, signaling the closest ties between the two countries’ militaries since the Khmer Rouge was in power.

“We did them before, but it was small scale, like when we trained with Chinese warships on humanitarian rescues, ” Royal Cambodia Armed Forces (RCAF) Deputy Commander Ith Sarath said on Thursday. “This year, we are doing it on a big scale.”

Royal Cambodian Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Pol Saroeun, left, takes part in the opening day of joint military exercises with China. (Khem Sovannara)

Relations between Cambodia’s government and China’s communist party were fraught for decades due to China’s backing of the Khmer Rouge, a trend that slowly reversed as the regime’s holdouts dropped their arms, and more rapidly as Beijing has recently poured money into Phnom Penh.

[Demographic Vietnamization: Military, Criminal Elements] Undocumented immigrants polluting the Tonle Sap

ផ្ទះបណ្ដែតទឹក នៅតាមបណ្ដោយ ទន្លេសាប ដែលភាគច្រេីន ជាអ្នកមាន គុណសម្តេច តេជោ​ នៃយើង​ -- យួន

- Chham Chhany

Demographic Vietnamization, undocumented immigrants polluting the Tonle Sap

Theary C. Seng

In Cambodian history -- modern (within living memory) and prior -- Vietnam has swallowed swathes of Cambodian territory (e.g. 21 provinces of Kampuchea Krom that make up present-day southern Vietnam/the Mekong Delta hardly 70 years ago) first by flooding Cambodian territory with its CITIZENS followed by MILITARY takeover/enforcement. But since the MILITARY invasion of Cambodia by Vietnam in Dec. 1978 followed by 10 years of military occupation, the process has been simultaneous and reversed -- military followed immediately and since by Vietnamese citizens -- with a blueprint to flood the south and remaining territory of Cambodia with 10 million Vietnamese by the year 2000, mainly their most vulnerables and undesirables, including the criminal elements. (That was 17 years ago.) Hence the culture of prostitution, beginning with the UNTAC era in 1991, with the occupying Vietnamese military and Hun Sen regime trafficking Vietnamese girls and women --already part of the culture during the Vietnam War with the US troops stationed in South Vietnam -- to satisfy the libido of 24,000 men from around the world paid handsomely in UN salary in a country that had just been devastated by the monsoonal downpour of US bombs at 500,000 TONS during unrelenting 4 years, followed almost immediately by another 4 years of KR mass crimes, and then the military invasion and 10-year occupation. Prostitution is the oldest profession and exists everywhere since time immemorial, including during pre-KR Cambodia, but not the CULTURE that is now identified with "Khmer" society. The initial population of trafficked Vietnamese girls and women over the years has also absorbed the once more reserved Cambodian girls and women.

Recently, I had a conversation with an in-law of the Huns who had just visited the disputed Koh Tral and a smaller nearby island that is undisputed as Cambodian. But that smaller island is now too populated with illegal Vietnamese citizens and patrolled by the Vietnamese military.

References:

Every Day in Cambodia

CNN | 23 March 2014

Mira Sorvino (5:45): Many are sold as virgins by their own parents. As we walked along the dirt road, Don points out a table of men playing cards.  He say they're there every day.

Don Brewster (5:52):  Instead of caring for their family or working, they sit there every day gambling, drinking all day because they traffic kids, including their own.

Mira: Their own?  They traffic their own children?

Don: Others, not just their own. ... They think they're untouchable.

Mira:  Do they even speak English?

Don: No, no.  Most of them speak Vietnamese.

,,,

CNN, March 2014

Svay Pak, a dusty shantytown on the outskirts of the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, is at the heart of this exploitative trade.

As one of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in one of Asia's poorest countries – nearly half the population lives on less than $2 per day -- the poverty in the settlement is overwhelming. The residents are mostly undocumented Vietnamese migrants, many of whom live in ramshackle houseboats on the murky Tonle Sap River, eking out a living farming fish in nets tethered to their homes.

,,,

Demographic Vietnamization

[Vietnamization, military] Hun Sen, Looking to Army, Sees Old Comrades

 [Background / related] 

Kun Kim

How Vietnam "foil plots" (democratic elections) to keep its CPP puppet in power in its destruction of Cambodia

Hun Sen, Looking to Army, Sees Old Comrades

 Cambodia Daily | 1 September 2016

When Prime Minister Hun Sen looks to top military leaders like commander-in-chief Pol Saroeun or his deputies, Kun Kim and Meas Sophea, he sees men with whom he has shared four decades of bloodshed, sweat and tears—and an unlikely rise to power.

—News Analysis—

As young communists, they fled Pol Pot’s purges into the forests, hitching their futures on the invading Vietnamese. They spent the 1980s branded as Hanoi’s puppets by the West, the royal family and today’s opposition leaders Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha.

From left: Deputy military commanders Chea Dara and Kun Kim stand next to Prime Minister Hun Sen during a meeting with soldiers near the Thai border in Preah Vihear province in 2010. (Reuters)

[Vietnamization military] In Peacetime, Cambodia’s Military Spending Soars

[background / related]

How Vietnam "foil plots" (democratic elections) to keep its CPP puppet in power in its destruction of Cambodia

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In Peacetime, Cambodia’s Military Spending Soars

Cambodia Daily | 24 November 2016

 

Cambodia is at peace, Prime Minister Hun Sen regularly tells his constituents.

—News Analysis—

“We turned former battlefields into markets and developed areas,” he boasted in an October speech marking 20 years of peace in former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Pailin province.

Why, then, does the government continue to pour an ever-increasing amount of money into the military, with the Defense Ministry’s annual budget jumping from $75.7 million in 2006 to $464 million in next year?